Old Guard

Prequel to The Fifth Element

or

Leeloo in the past

or

Charliez Theron being a badass

The Craft (1996)

Magical Mean Girls.






Oldie, but still holds up.  Soundtrack is now musak in supermarkets and CVS.

Better Call Saul

You can't escape your past.

Based on the supporting characters from Breaking Bad,  Saul Goodman and Mike Ehrmantraut, the viewer is taken into the back stories of these characters, how they met and ended up being partners.  It is black comedy and drama and the dialogue is better than in Breaking Bad.

Well worth watching.

Vikings Season 1

No one expects the Viking Invasions.




Swords, pillaging, beheadings, dirt, muck, rape, meat, slaves, ships, starvation.

Breaking Bad - the entire series

Moral grey zone. Explore how your exposure changes your way of thinking about things.  Adapt or die.

Oblivion

Moon + Coma + The Matrix + The Borg + Terminator and the Hal 9000 thrown in for good measure.








Tom Cruise being every action hero he's been, except not Minority Report.  This movie builds over the first hour and 12 minutes, desolate scenery, character building, world building, and you think, "Wow, this is gonna be amazing", and then it's not.   I'm a big fan of sci-fi and action and I am more than willing to forgive giant holes and nods to other movies and actors phoning it in, but this was such a direct rip off of Moon with Time Machine and The Matrix jumbled in that it actually pissed me off.  The last 45 minutes of the movie was a big rush to blow things up and then they pulled one of those M. Night "surprise!" deux ex machina dick moves and I ended up  screaming at the screen and cursing the director, who as it happens, was also the writer, go figure.  Seriously, this could have been a great sci-fi movie even with the ripping off of the other movies, but Hollywood needs to stop giving these guys carte blanche and they need to start putting money into training editors who edit scripts and the film itself.  They need to stop letting these guys operate in either the vacuum or the echo chamber.  It's like the author's of successful series who decide that they don't need an editor any more for publishing and every precious word or idea is a perfect flower.  It's not.  It's ego.  And they need to check it at the gate and give us good writing again.

Blood Clan (Rabies or "Kalevet")

Their makeup artists aren't afraid of bone fragments.

Fear.net offering.

Israeli horror flick.  Subtitles.  Some krav maga. All the women have blue eyes...

Chained

D'onofrio's Men in Black character drives a cab as cover for his secret life.








So, he and the director wanted to call this movie "Rabbit"  which would have been a much better title.  It built up and up and up and then it just stops.  They ran out of money.  So I was all into it being an 8 out of 10, but then it was a 6.  Bummer.  It coulda been a contender.

Innocent Blood

French Vampire decides that the mob is wasting blood.







Set in Pittsburgh, uses all our favorites from every mob movie, including a few you wouldn't expect like Don Rickles.  John Landis directed so you know there is comic relief.

Byzantium

Secret vampire society, no girls allowed.





Retelling, can walk in daylight, no sparkles, everyone out to get them, etc.
Lovely costumes during the back story bits, bleak scenery of winter in the English seaside, love, loss, greed, redemption.  I thought the ending a little too pat, as though they had an alternate but those crazy Americans in the test audience wanted a happy finish.   Saoirse Ronin was amazing as usual.  And I could watch Gemma Arterton in anything.

Hodejegerne (Headhunters)

Little movie from Norway about motivations and miscommunications...

It's convoluted and fun and you won't mind the subtitles.

.....

Killer Joe

So, Matthew McConaughey?  You're gonna hate him.
And you're gonna hate fried chicken.

Inglourious Basterds

Tarantino rewrites history.

or


What if America hadn't ignored the war for so long?

Drive

The smallest act of kindness never goes unpunished.

Chronicle

Shifting character tropes in a surprisingly good genre film...

or

Superman, Spiderman, and Batman meet in a field...

or

Professor Xavier didn't find these guys in time to give them purpose.

We need to talk about Kevin

The perils of post-partum depression, 15 years later...

Hanna

If Kick-Ass had been reality based.

Drive

How the transporter was born

Killer Elite

Usual fare of one guy wants out... hitmen, covert ops, exotic locations...